At What Point Did Genuine Open Source Get So Evil?
Source: smithonvoip.com
An interesting discussion broke out today on the Asterisk Business discussion list (Moshe also posted about this) about Digium banning Adwords advertisers from using Digium trademarks like “Digium” and “Asterisk”. I was first made aware of this on Monday, not by Digium, but when I received an email from the Google Adwords team notifying me that almost all of VoIP Supply’s Digium Adwords campaigns had been paused by Google for trademark infringement.
Let me get this straight; a company like VoIP Supply sells millions of dollars worth of Digium products each year and has done so for more than three years and they A) were not added to the safe list and B) were never notified by Digium that this change was being made?
I have no problems with Digium protecting their trademarks, but when you have a reseller who has been selling millions of dollars per year of a companies products for over three years, you would figure that company would at least be proactive and tell the reseller that they are going to be doing this (or add you to the safe list). What happened to that fun loving company we all use to love?
Sorry if this sounds a little like a rant, but at what point did Digium decide that they want to be more like Cisco and Microsoft and less like a company that cares about their resellers, partners and community…especially those who have helped them get to where they are. I just don’t get it.
What I find most humorous about this that if you resell Digium PCI cards, like VoIP Supply does and you advertise that Digium PCI card on Google via Adwords, you can’t put “works with Asterisk” in the ad copy for that product as the Google filters will boot the ad.
Maybe Digium wants their hardware resellers to substitute “Asterisk” with “trixbox” or one of the other open source telephony platforms…
Disclaimer: As with all my posts the views expressed are mine and do not reflect that of my past, present or future employers.
